Waste and pollution management

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Description:

Waste management is the collection, transport, processing or disposal of waste materials, usually ones produced by human activity, in an effort to reduce their effect on human health or local aesthetics or amenity. Pollution is the unintended side-effect of economic growth. Increasing industrial activity and spreading urbanization generate air emissions, pollution of waterways and increasing quantities of solid and hazardous waste, all of which have negative impacts on the environment and on populations at scales ranging from the very local to the global. Polluted water, acid rain and contamination of land can result in significant economic losses through adverse impacts on health and productivity. A key challenge for sustainable development is to break the linkages between continued growth and the quantities of pollutants discharged to the environment, by reducing the "pollution intensity" of industrial production. Pollution management, which specifically involves reducing and cleaning up pollution, is expected to be one of the fastest growing industries of the future.


Enablers:

  • Governments have passed laws and set guidelines which will help set pollution standards e.g. In 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which limited the amount of air pollution that cars, utilities, and industries could release.
  • Scientists and engineers have helped by developing products and processes that are cleaner and safer for the environment. For example, they have developed devices that remove harmful particles from smokestack emissions at power plants.
  • Businesses are working towards finding safer ways to dispose of solid and chemical wastes. They are also reducing the amount of solid waste that ends up in the landfill by recycling such things as paper, plastic, bottles, and cans.

Inhibitors:

  • Rapidly growing population
  • Costly

Paradigms:

A subfocus in recent decades has been to reduce waste materials' effect on the natural world and the environment and to recover resources from them.

Experts:

Environmentalist, Governments, Scientists


Timing:

  • 6,500 BC North America Archeological studies shows a clan of Native Americans in what is now Colorado produced an average of 5.3 pounds of waste a day.
  • 500 BC Athens Greece First municipal dump in western world organized. Regulations required waste to be dumped at least a mile from the city limits.
  • 1388 England English Parliament bars waste dispersal in public waterways and ditches.
  • 1400 Paris France Garbage piles so high outside of Paris gates that it interferes with city defense.
  • 1690 Philadelphia Rittenhouse Mill, Philadelphia makes paper from recycled fibers (waste paper and rags).
  • 1842 England A report links disease to filthy environmental conditions - "age of sanitation" begins.
  • 1874 Nottingham England A new technology called "the Destructor" provided the first systematic incineration of refuse in Nottingham, England. Until this time, much of the burning was accidental, a result of methane production.
  • 1885 Governor's Island NY The first garbage incinerator was built in USA (on Governor's Island in NY)
  • 1889 Washington DC Washington DC reported that we were running out of appropriate places for refuse
  • 1896 United States Waste reduction plants arrive in US. (for compressing organic wastes). Later closed because of noxious emissions.
  • 1898 New York NY has first rubbish sorting plant for recycling
  • Turn of Century By the turn of the century the garbage problem was seen as one of the greatest problems for local authorities.
  • 1900 "Piggeries" were developed to eat fresh or cooked garbage (In the mid-50's an outbreak of vesicluar exenthama resulted in the destruction of 1,000s of pigs that had eaten raw garbage. Law passed requiring that garbage had to be cooked before it could be fed to swine).
  • 1911 New York City NYC citizens were producing 4.6 pounds of refuse a day
  • 1914 United States there were about 300 incinerators in the US for burning trash.
  • 1920's Landfills were becoming a popular way of reclaiming swamp land while getting rid of trash.
  • 1954 Olympia Washington Olympia Washington pays for return of aluminum cans.
  • 1965 United States The first federal solid waste management laws were enacted.
  • 1968 By 1968 companies began buy back recycling of containers.
  • 1970 United States The first Earth Day was celebrated, the Environmental Protection Agency EPA created and the Resource Recovery Act enacted.
  • 1976 United States In 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was created emphasizing recycling and HW management. This was the result of two major events: the oil embargo and the discovery (or recognition) of Love Canal.
  • 1979 United States The EPA issued criteria prohibiting open dumping.
  • 1982 Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act which directed the Department of Energy to formally begin planning the disposal of nuclear wastes and imposed most of the costs of disposal on the nuclear power industry.
  • 1970,1977,1990 The Clean Air Act was originally enacted in 1970 and was extensively amended in 1977 and again in 1990. Under its provisions, every stationary and mobile pollution source must comply with emission standards as a means of cleaning up the ambient air quality in the area.
  • In 1997 more than 1.3 million people in the United States were employed in environmental industries related to pollution control.

Web Resources:

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